


May your feet touch the sea when ready

by adrift_me



Series: ME One-shots [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mass Effect 2, Pining, Post-Mass Effect 2, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:10:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8082592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrift_me/pseuds/adrift_me
Summary: Another look on post-ME2: Arrival. The goodbye scene between Thane and Shepard.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Characters belong to Bioware.  
> Find me on [tumblr](http://a-driftamongopenstars.tumblr.com/) (my ME sideblog).

“The course is set to the Citadel, Commander. ETA 3 hours.”

Shepard sighed. She was standing in front of the life support door. Her cheeks were burning with shame, because she chose to cloak to get here, instead of bravely looking in the crew’s eyes. But she couldn’t. She barely managed to explain why the Normandy was getting grounded, why their commander will likely be escorted out with handcuffs on her wrists. They had faith in her, she saved their lives, but now… Did she fail them in the end?

The life support door slid open. Shepard found Thane sitting at the table, a datapad in his hand. The drell seemed distracted, fully absorbed in what he was writing down.

Shepard made a step, a slow and a careful one. Another step. She quietly watched Thane tapping on the orange screen of the datapad. She saw him thinking over this or that word, erasing it and writing something else. He seemed serene, granted the rare moments of peace. She feared talking to him or touching him, because it felt like bringing the end closer. And while she postponed the conversation, the inevitable seemed further away.

And yet, Shepard wanted to approach him, to slide her arms round Thane’s broadly spread shoulders and to embrace him. She would do it gently, not to deprive him of already lacking oxygen. She’d hide in his shoulder and maybe it would make all the bad events go away. She did this with her Mother when she was little. “Don’t worry, dear, they’ll go away,” Hannah Shepard would say, holding her little daughter in her arms, when their ship was trapped at one of the docking bays on a distant planet.

Maybe just hiding in  _ this _ shoulder, hidden under the leather of a coat, was the key to destroying the Reapers, Collectors, pushing away the Alliance and the Council, bringing peace - all in this one shoulder. But all this shoulder could truly do was to take away the pain of past love and past life. And not for long.

“Siha?”

Thane turned around when a betraying tear ran down Shepard’s cheek and she huffed, annoyed at herself. She pressed her lips together in an effort and looked away. The drell rose and in one step approached the woman, taking her in his arms and allowing her the vulnerability and freedom. She didn’t cry more, but clang onto the only thing she wanted to be in her life. Her hands gently caressed Thane’s neck, and his were slowly and lovingly rubbing her back.

“We’ll be at the Citadel soon,” she said, finding her voice stuck down in her throat.

“I know.”

“I can’t go with you,” it was even harder to say.

“I know,” Thane repeated. They instinctively squeezed each other, like buoys, safeguards in the ocean of pain they found each other drowning in. How truthfully people say, we fear the unknown. Shepard couldn’t predict what would happen, once the Normandy docked at the Alliance. Thane couldn’t predict what would happen, when he stepped down onto the Citadel and followed his son away from this year of strange, inexplicable life. He would have to leave behind the woman he fell in love with, the mission, which had already been complete, but still felt current.

“The war is coming. Peace has never been your guardian. It was war that brought so many good people to you and led you to them. Perhaps…”

Shepard wanted to shudder because she knew it was true. Peace was the goal, but war was the guardian, under the protection of which she managed to live. She was shaped by it and hardly knew anything else.

“Maybe, when the Reapers strike, the Alliance brass will take handcuffs off my hands.”

“Your previous command in the face of noble Admiral Hackett and Captain Anderson would not allow handcuffs,” she heard Thane smirk as he said it. She smiled too.

“What I mean is that they might not have a choice. It will be  _ my _ ass on the line when the Reapers come and I don’t want it any other way. It will be tough, but… I feel like I started it. Back when I touched the Prothean beacon.”

“Then it is yours to finish.”

Shepard moved away just slightly, her hands sliding off Thane’s back and into his hands. Strange fingers, strong hands gripped on hers, grasping the last moment of their closeness. She looked in Thane’s face, for once craving for the drell memory abilities, to remember this moment in every detail and to savour it later, for she might not have anything else to do for the next indefinite months.

When they found each other in their arms later, their cheeks touching as Shepard sat in Thane’s laps, he whispered in her ear:

“I’ve known war as you have and I know it shall be bloody. Do not pity the fallen, but remember them as an embodiment of pain and victory. Let their fall be your steps to winning.  And when you are ready… May your feet touch the sea when ready.”


End file.
